What Happened To Puck?

Puck was the first hero to coin a “million dollar” move. That was S4, whose Dream Coil at TI3 sealed Alliance’s grand finals victory over Na’Vi. Today, Puck has the 2nd lowest win rate on our charts, just a hair above Lone Druid. The hero has been buffed quite a bit over the past few patches, but a crucial change to its ultimate and a shift in the meta has left the hero feeling quite impotent in the mid and late stages of the game. Being a high skill-cap hero, Puck’s pub win rate has always been low even when it was a top pick in the meta. But now the hero has officially been in the dumpster at all levels of play.

Out of 148 matches during TI8’s group stage, Puck was picked twice and lost both of them. The hero also went completely ignored during the main event—neither picked or banned. After TI8, the highest profile event was the qualifiers for the Dreamleague Minor. Teams picked Puck 3 out of 94 matches and also went winless there.

Keeping Up With The Meta

With the return of dual lanes, the solo mid, and an emphasis on laning, Puck should have been an ideal fit. But take a look at the mid hero pool at TI8. Popular picks at the main event included heroes like Alchemist, Tiny, Pugna, Invoker, Lina, Necrophos. There was also the occasional Storm Spirit. These are cores that not only have favorable matchups mid, but they transition well past the mid game.

Puck’s strength lies in its elusiveness, laning, and initial burst damage. As a hero that can dominate the early game but not necessarily the rest of it, it has similar faults to another staple mid of the past—Queen of Pain. With so much of Puck’s damage contingent on the burst of Orb and Waning Rift, there isn’t much growth for the hero in latter parts of the game. And ever since Dream Coil had its initial damage removed, Puck has even less burst now.

A hero like Pugna has greater magic damage burst on a lower cooldown, and he can pressure towers. Queen of Pain doesn’t require farming a Blink Dagger, and she has better Agility gain to transition towards more physical damage. Even then, she isn’t part of the meta.

As other heroes’ impact scales with items, Puck’s core items are built to strengthen its survivability. Blink Dagger and Eul’s Scepter is 4.7k gold worth of items that become fairly lackluster. And they’re quite often necessary for Puck to just last in fights, as Phase Shift isn’t enough, especially when it’s usually leveled up last.

It's been awhile since Puck's win rate has been above 40%.

Puck dominated in the past when support heroes had few tools to defend themselves from the burst. Today there are Glimmer Capes, magic resistance perks on Strength, and survivability talents. Puck’s damage peaks with max Rift and Orb, then tapers off afterward, while everyone else’s survivability catches up.

To counter this eventual dip, players have gravitated toward items like Veil and Dagon. It’s a sign that Puck isn’t good enough to be used as a utility core. Dream Coil isn’t as good an initiation tool today, and Puck can’t continue to rest on its other skills.

Reworking Puck For Today

The most likely revival of Puck in the competitive scene may be with Evil Geniuses, who have two specialists on the roster in Sumail and S4. They last-picked it for Sumail, four months ago during the TI8 qualifiers against Team Complexity, with a draft that had multiple synergies with Dream Coil—Elder Titan’s Stomp and Bloodseeker’s Bloodrite. EG also last picked it again—this time for S4—in the Summit Qualifiers against Fnatic. This time it ended in a loss, and S4 scrambled to turn it around with a Rapier, MKB and Puck’s Rapid Fire talent.

Puck’s skillset is strong, but it’s just at the wrong place and time. It doesn’t seem like buffs to the hero’s damage or an increase in silence duration will edge the hero any closer to relevance. Looking at the trend of patches, Valve has been designing around Puck's early game strengths. Its base damage, 53-64, is one of the highest for a hero in the game. And over 7.17 and 7.19, Waning Rift's silence has significantly increased from 0.75/1.5/2.25/3 to 2/2.5/3/3.5--a 267% increase in the silence duration at level 1. It hasn't edged Puck any closer into viability.

Either teams can try to shoehorn Puck in a viable lineup, or a patch could bring a bevy changes that makes Puck’s strengths viable again. What's more likely to happen is a rework to the hero's talents and skills to keep it up to date with the meta. A buff to its spell damage talent could mitigate the hero's decline, or just a reversion to Dream Coil's spell, with some tweaks to its damage. We’ll all just have to hold out a little longer for patch 7.20.

I <3 PUCK! It's a shame that this mid/late game meta is clouding him out. Perhaps a rework to make it's Phase Shift work like Mirana's Leaps with bonus attack speed would solve the problem. I feel that Puck is still viable in pub matches if the team has big teamfight ults, but anywhere else it just feels out-of-place. No tanking, no damage, it's like playing scout in tf2 only using the Holy Mackerel.

In other news,

Currently the Enchanted Mango has a 31.16% win rate. This is a tragedy. Whether being accidentally used while still in fountain or used just in time for that clutch nyx stun saving your teammate's life, it has always made memorable game impacts. It is our duty and responsibility as fellow gamers and members of this community to give the item the win rate it deserves. Thank you in advance for your support.

Played puck once as a sacrificial offlane. I prefer Puck as a great space creator. But the talent tree is so awkward (who needs rapid fire like seriously). The problem of puck is the fragility. Linken, aeon, eul and blink dagger are pretty much puck item choice leaving only 1 item left (which is either dagon or sycthe). Puck as midlane won't be happening soon, but offlane or even support puck will come.

Well.. yea.. OD was about 51~54% winrate at 2016, and then 46~48% in early 2017 (If I'm not mistaken). And now it's just went much downhill as far as towards 41% (with some other times I see him 38~39% somewhere this year). I'm an OD player myself, so I felt this hit, and has since long found a foothold on TA at my new account.

In my opinion, there are a couple of things which contributed to this loses of OD's winrate.

1). No reliable sustain mechanism in battlefield.
The nerf to Hurricane Pike health regen (from 5.5 HP to 2.0) is one thing. But generally there wasn't any health regen core build for OD to begin with. Except if you go Linken Sphere (maybe), which isn't too often in many of the games. This resulted in OD having not enough sustain in battlefield, especially against AOE spell nukes, and continuous long range hits (such as versus Sniper, Zeus, and the likes), so he'll frequently found himself with low HP, even at the beginning of enemy's initiation.

'But the other heroes also cope with these endeavors, aren't they ?'

Now let's compare OD with the rest of Midlaners.
OD isn't a kind of hero which has a reliable defensive / escape mechanism by nature. Prison needs to be chosen wisely. Whether you want to save a teammate from dying, delete a dangerous opponent temporarily in wars (for 4 seconds), or to Prison yourself in a last resort 'defense' act, -which then 'hopefully' provided with a non-cooldown Blink Dagger so you can safely blink away, -which isn't always the case in many occasions. -assuming you can successfully blink in time, with the correct direction, with all those enemies or AOE spells waiting outside your Prison. Many OD's in all levels, in fact, suffers from this last-resort Prison mechanism.. i.e. They still died at the end.

Other Midlaners has a pretty much, more straightforward, and easier ways to execute to get out of battle. Storm Spirit can just storm away from any danger (provided he has the mana, and a half-second of consciousness). Windranger (if you still count her as a Midlaner) has Windrun. Same thing can be said to QOP, with 6-seconds Blink cooldown. With most of them included Eul Scepter and Linken as core item choices. Add to those items for Shadow Fiend, who frequently also uses Shadow Blade / Silver Edge to complete his core build. Even a squishy Invoker could still save some Defeaning Blast, Tornado, Ice Wall, and Ghost Walk to bail himself out. TA ? Refraction, Meld, coupled with Dagger and BKB. End of story. Wait, don't forget Ember and Necro too.

As for other midlaners such as Sniper and Zeus mostly played far back outside of the battlefield, OD in another hand, needs to be closer to his enemies. Though Hurricane Pike might help a little bit on it, but you're still easily 'seen' when hitting enemies, unlike the previous two. But at the same time also OD don't have the reliable (straightforward) defense / reductions / escape means, or build, whatever, like the previous group of Midlaners.

Whether you planned it or not, OD will eventually ends-up tanking (receiving) more damages, compared to another Midlaner in general, due to either his skillset, build, positioning, and playstyle.

Buying Veil of Discord or Mekans to add some sustain doesn't feel in place too. As Veil utility is for magical damage whereas OD's Arcane Orb is a Pure one. Mekans might be bought by your offlaner or supports, though it also doesn't blend in well with the 'scaling' of OD's progression into the late game, due to it only serves +5 INT points.

Most of the times, the more successful OD are those who bought BKB, though it's not always the case. As the game progressed further, enemies can just back away waiting for 5 secs BKB to fade out, and then re-engage. Or just bought the BKB themselves.

2). OD is heavily countered by BKB.
Unlike at the previous era of a few years back, people are now more disciplined. Even in low Tier brackets, you'll see core heroes buying BKB without the need of supports telling them to. Especially against OD. And OD does nothing against BKB, I can say. None of his spells works. And he doesn't have right-click without the Arcane Orb. So, OD is fighting a lose battle, mostly against a natural BKB-user heroes.

'Then we buy BKB for ourselves?'

Once again. There's a big difference between OD and the other core heroes when it comes to interaction with BKB.
Imagine PA vs OD. Both uses BKB at the same time. PA still hits hard on you with Coup de Grace and Phantom Strike both piercing spell immunity. While you as OD can't even enable your Arcane Orb, nor even hitting accurately if you don't have MKB to pierce through PA's evasion. Outcome? You know it.

Though it doesn't have to be PA, it can be any other core heroes, you name it. AM, Spectre, Alche, Troll, Huskar, TBlade, TA, all has similar mechanism in terms of BKB interaction versus OD. Both of you has BKB. They hit you, you don't hit them back.

There are probably some other factors which I didn't realize, but in my opinion, at least these two disadvantages are by general the most contributing defects toward OD's low winrate.

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